CloudFirst Helps T.H. Weiss Defy the Elements With Cloud-Based Migration

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Located in Lawrence, NY, T.H. Weiss is a full-service licensed customs broker specializing in inbound, outbound and domestic shipments, trucking, consulting and warehousing for over 30 years. As a customs broker, they are required by law to communicate all business dealings regarding their clients with U.S. Customs.

THE CHALLENGE

All information T.H. Weiss sends to the government is delivered electronically, making it imperative that they maintain fast, reliable, secure connection with U.S. Customs. However, the company was experiencing periodic outages with their onsite power and internet connection, which only worsened in the aftermath of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. In the wake of the storm, T.H. Weiss found its headquarters underwater and entirely without power and unable to transmit information to U.S. Customs, forcing the staff to commute to a pop-up office in New Jersey for over two weeks. They were in desperate need for a longterm solution.

THE SOLUTION

It was clear right away that a cloud-based migration was necessary in order to prevent future disruptions and guarantee continual, uninterrupted communications. We redesigned their business infrastructure and modernized all their equipment using a hybrid cloud solution. The migration to the cloud was transparent to T.H. Weiss’s clients, performed after hours in order to prevent any impact on business operations. The cloud solution we provided included an integrated network connection to U.S. Customs and shifted T.H. Weiss’s onsite file-sharing business applications to the cloud, including RJC Software, and included backup for both their Intel and IBM i servers.

THE RESULTS

The positive results of the IBM i cloud migration were immediate. T.H. Weiss’s connection issues were addressed and resolved and the client no longer had to worry about power outages or connections to U.S. Customs failing. It improved their business uptime and service to their clients while greatly reducing programming costs. The migration also eliminated the need to worry about costs associated with software and hardware upgrades, updates and maintenance. The main benefit of the migration: employees were now able to access the production systems at any time and from anywhere in the world. This came into play when the system in New York failed while T.H. Weiss owner Tony Fondacaro was on vacation in Italy. As the only one who could fix the issue, Fondacaro was able to log onto the Milan hotel’s WiFi with his laptop at 2 a.m. EST and fix the problem. Had T.H. Weiss not migrated to a cloud-based system, this would not have been possible. Overall, T.H. Weiss considers CloudFirst a true partner, and continue to rely on us to provide managed services and ezSupport for their desktops, printers and scanners.